The Iliad is a poem whose events revolve around the “anger” of Achilles, and his personal fierceness and pursuit of glory remain, despite different and more complex nuances, the prevailing features ...
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The Iliad is a poem whose events revolve around the “anger” of Achilles, and his personal fierceness and pursuit of glory remain, despite different and more complex nuances, the prevailing features of his characterization. This book proposes to investigate how different literary authors and visual artists at different periods responded to Achilles' “erotic life”, an aspect about which the Iliadwas almost completely silent. Achilles' loves expose a crack in the usually self-assured attitude of the hero, demonstrating the limits of epic heroism and the epic vision of the world. As such, these moments of erotic “weakness” became perfect manifestos for reuse in other genres, such as tragedy and the various forms of love poetry, in which themes of love and passion were more customary than in heroic epic.Less

Achilles in Love : Intertextual Studies

Marco Fantuzzi

Published in print: 2012-12-20

The Iliad is a poem whose events revolve around the “anger” of Achilles, and his personal fierceness and pursuit of glory remain, despite different and more complex nuances, the prevailing features of his characterization. This book proposes to investigate how different literary authors and visual artists at different periods responded to Achilles' “erotic life”, an aspect about which the Iliadwas almost completely silent. Achilles' loves expose a crack in the usually self-assured attitude of the hero, demonstrating the limits of epic heroism and the epic vision of the world. As such, these moments of erotic “weakness” became perfect manifestos for reuse in other genres, such as tragedy and the various forms of love poetry, in which themes of love and passion were more customary than in heroic epic.

The contrast between Achilles and Thersites, who according to the “Aethiopis” charged Achilles with falling in love with the Amazon Penthesileia, is interpreted in light of its possible meta-literary ...
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The contrast between Achilles and Thersites, who according to the “Aethiopis” charged Achilles with falling in love with the Amazon Penthesileia, is interpreted in light of its possible meta-literary implications; this contrast can be seen as a dialogic reaction of epic values to an erotic motif.Less

Flirting with the Enemy

Marco Fantuzzi

Published in print: 2012-12-20

The contrast between Achilles and Thersites, who according to the “Aethiopis” charged Achilles with falling in love with the Amazon Penthesileia, is interpreted in light of its possible meta-literary implications; this contrast can be seen as a dialogic reaction of epic values to an erotic motif.